In a recent post in the How I Write series over on Barnes & Noble’s Book Blog, author Lauren Oliver mentioned that she wrote most of her first novel on her BlackBerry. This isn’t wholly surprising given how we’ve heard about phone novels for years now (and even seen some published). But when I recently tried to get some writing done on a BlackBerry I found it more difficult than it should be. Read more →
Techee Klatsch
Do you hate Android skins? Then you’re probably a guy.
The other day I had a Twitter exchange with Dan Seifert of the Verge about my dislike of stock Android. The divergence of opinion on the matter of toggles and notification areas reminded me of a conversation I had a few weeks ago at a Sony event. The electronics arm of the company invited women bloggers to have a conversation about marketing to women. At one point Helena Bell of ChipChick and I hit on what it is about Android that so many people we know find annoying about it: lack of efficiency. The number of taps it takes to do something simple is just silly. And hunting for apps in the Google Play store, who has time for that? I’ve known this is a problem for a while, what I didn’t realize is that whether or not you do seems to depend on whether you’re a man or a woman. Read more →
From paper journal to digital note – is this finally convenient enough to do on a regular?
My big project last week was writing a piece on melding analog handwriting tools with digital ones. While doing the research and testing all the different methods a tidbit of information kept surfacing in my thoughts. Years ago I read an interview with actor/poet/artist/musician Viggo Mortensen where he recounted the time he lost three years worth of journals when some… Read more →
Third-party devs make Twitter and Tumblr better, yet get pooped on. Why?
Several months ago, Tumblr users who had a browser extensions called “The Missing e” installed loaded up their dashboards and came across this message: The message uses a lot of scary words — browser hack, privacy, data loss — meant to rattle the less clueful. Then it presents users with a silly choice: uninstall the ‘hack’ right now or forfeit… Read more →
How do you get your fiction fix?
Just a year ago I was complaining about how it was still an annoying multi-step process to get short fiction from my favorite magazines onto my mobile device of choice. Back then it was my eReader. These days I read on a tablet, but only because none of my eInk eReaders has the versatility I need for what I do.
The tablet I use everyday is a 7-inch Galaxy Tab, which is the perfect size for tableting, according to me. The two apps I use to grab short fiction are the official Google Reader app and Pocket (used to be Read It Later). Sometimes I have to use the browser. Read more →
Do you care if your phone gets the latest Android OS?
Earlier this summer, Google announced the newest version of the Android operating system, dubbed Jelly Bean. The moment this new Android became official I started seeing posts pop up on tech blogs attempting to answer the queston: When will my phone get Jelly Bean? Before that you could find hundreds of posts attempting to answer a similar question: when will… Read more →
Sharing Contact Information Digitally: Why Isn’t This Easy For Android Phones?
In my preparation for the BlogHer conference (which was awesome!), I wanted to put together several ways to share my contact information with the people I would meet. I have traditional paper business cards, of course. But since I’m a digital geek girl, I also poked into my contact card on my phone and looked into ways I could share… Read more →
Making A List: Gadgets Writers Can’t Live Without
As you may have seen if you’re following my Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr, I’m doing a regular column for Book Country now. (By the way, Book Country is an excellent hangout for genre writers. Not just SF/F, but mystery, romance, etc. Get critiques, get writing advice, meet new people, it’s pretty awesome.) The column will focus on tech for writers… Read more →
Who Even Uses MP3 Players Anymore?
I’ve had people I work with ask me this or utter similar things in my presence a lot lately. Perhaps because I keep pushing the issue. Or perhaps I just notice it more given my feelings on such things of late. It happened again today and spurred me into blogging mode. Because I started to wonder: who does use MP3… Read more →
Building A Better eReader Review
The eReaders keep on coming, and this week we got in the Kobo Reader and the Pandigital Novel, both of which I get to review since I am the eReader queen over at Laptop. This is in no way a burden, since I’m really into the category and can’t wait to find the perfect eReader at the perfect price. If… Read more →